Growing Your Team with Submittable

Thriving businesses rely on talented team members. Submittable has helped countless organizations find the right candidates, including SpaceX, Los Angeles Times, Nesta, The American Institute of Graphic Arts, Kennedy Center and many more. We’ve assembled some tips just in time for your next hire. From planning and recruiting to reviewing and hiring, Submittable’s software and job-sharing resources make finding the right candidate simple and successful.

Planning

In order to reach the right applicants for your job, it’s essential to identify and articulate exactly what you’re looking for. This can alleviate workload for your review team and also better serve potential applicants. Creating a customized application helps you isolate the most important qualifications for your position, and specify which materials are most likely to support a successful candidate’s response.

If you’re using Submittable, our software is already designed to help you accept standard job materials like resumes, cover letters, and references, although you might choose to make your application distinct by soliciting unique responses or media. Perhaps a short video of applicants talking about their first job would help, or you want them to link to a website where they showcase their work. With Submittable, you can easily accept and review all kinds of media, helping applicants to display both overall talent and specific skills.

This brings up an important consideration about your company’s profile. A professional, web-based job application (as opposed to emailed attachments or paper forms) promotes your organization’s innovative, modern image. Not only does it demonstrate to applicants that the process matters to you but also, it can help you weed out inappropriate applications.

According to Jennifer Dodgson, Director of Education at The Loft Literary Center, “We know that candidates who can apply using Submittable are fairly adept at working with various technological platforms and can easily adapt to evolving systems. I found both of my current education program associates using Submittable, and they’re easily the finest colleagues I’ve put in the positions. They’re flexible, adaptable, and know how to intuit new technology platforms quite well.”

Recruitment

Once you’ve designed an application, reaching the right audience is essential. Submittable has multiple resources to assist. Our Discover feature allows job seekers to find your opportunity from within their Submittable accounts. If your job is in any way arts-related, put in a free promotion request and we’ll share your call in our weekly newsletter (over 240K subscribers) and on our Twitter (20.6K followers).

Further, sharing your job is much easier through a single URL than via an email address and job description. Submittable’s software also allows anyone visiting your job page to share with their own networks through our social sharing buttons.

As applicants apply through Submittable, they’ll receive an automated message you can customize, confirming that their application has been received and providing any additional info you would like to include, such as the timeframe in which they can expect to hear from you. This automatic response is not only courteous and professional, but will save you time from having to send individual responses to candidates.

Review

Since your new hire will need to work well within your organization, you’ll want key members of your team involved in the review process. Through Submittable, applications can be automatically assigned to these individuals, who will have fast access to applications, with no need to download any files in order to view them. Reviewers can communicate with one another digitally, respond to customized review forms, or even engage in multiple-round reviewing.

Christine Texeira, of Education & Programs at Hugo House, speaks to these advantages: “Hugo House uses Submittable to manage all of our job searches, as well as applications for residencies and fellowships. As a small staff, where all jobs overlap in some capacity, reviewing applicants at Hugo House is often a group effort. Submittable allows us to review applications and share feedback in a way that works for all of our variable schedules. Personally, my email often feels like a black hole — where I lose information before I’m able to organize or address it. It’s an unbelievable relief to have the entire hiring/selection process taken out of my email and organized on Submittable.”

Making the bad hire can adversely affect more than your work environment – it can be dangerously costly, potentially damaging key relationships as well as your organization’s image. Great jobs attract hundreds of qualified applicants for a single position; it’s essential to sort and filter application materials based on important data to help you avoid spending time on the wrong candidates. Submittable makes that effortless.

Interview is key and the key to good interviewing is preparation. In order to make the best use of everyone’s time, when you get to this stage, being familiar with your candidate will help you gather the right information and ultimately make the best hiring decision. However you conduct interviews (in a group, individually, or in a series) Submittable makes getting to know your applicants a breeze. Not to mention the ease of having their application materials quickly, digitally accessible at all times, including during your interviews.

Hiring

According to Jeff Haden, it’s essential to ‘provide closure for every candidate,” especially those you didn’t hire. “Failing to follow up is rude and unprofessional. Think about it: Candidates paid your business a massive compliment by wanting to work with you. After all, they’re willing to spend more time with you than their family. Plus, when you don’t provide closure, candidates won’t complain to you…but they will complain about you… Not only is that good business, it’s simply the right thing to do.”

With Submittable, you can reach out to multiple candidates regarding your decision in a single click. This is your opportunity to kindly decline individuals before archiving their submissions (should you ever need to retrieve them again). Even if you have chosen not to hire candidates for this particular opportunity, you may wish to label their applications so you can easily contact them with openings in the future. You can also use Submittable to share your new hire’s application with team members who weren’t part of the review process and will be looking forward to meeting them.

Good luck in the search – Submittable’s always here to help.

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Interesting in trying out our software for your next great hire? You can schedule a free demo here